1952 classic English detective fiction; fourteenth of Allingham's
novels of Albert Campion. Meg Elginbrodde thought she was widowed in
the war, and now plans to marry again; but someone is sending her
recent photographs of a man who might be her late husband. Can it
really be as simple as blackmail?

No, of course it can't; it's all much more complicated than that.
But much of the mystery will revealed quite early: who's doing the
killing, and at least approximately why, is clear by the half-way
mark, and the remainder of the story is mostly thriller rather than
detection.

He's done nothing illegal and nothing reprehensible. Gambling is the
only thing they don't call you to account for these days. It's not
like working; you can be penalised for that. Gambling is
respectable. I have two bob on the pools myself every week, I've got
to think of my old age. My pension won't keep me.

Campion himself has moved largely to the background (where he often
was in the earliest books of the series); he goes away and finds
stuff, and then comes back to talk about what he's found, but it's
Charlie Luke the policeman who's mostly the protagonist here, with
some sections from the viewpoint of Meg's intended as well as a few
others.

He was the best of policemen, which is to say that he never for one
moment assumed that he was judge or jury, warder or hangman. He saw
himself as the shepherd dog does; until he had rounded him up the
malefactor was his private responsibility, to be protected as well
as cornered.

There are a few Chestertonian touches here, both a new take on his
invisible man and a theological discussion between the killer and an
elderly priest which seems as though it might belong in an entirely
different book. There's also unfinished business from the war, a lost
treasure, and an abrupt but dreamlike closing scene frankly
reminiscent of Murnau's Nosferatu.

This is very much a book of its time as well as its place: tired,
worn-out London, that's survived the war but hasn't yet come to terms
with just what was lost. Grimy fog blankets everything, stopping you
from seeing just how grimy it would still be even without the fog.
(And this was written before the Great Smog of December 1952.)

"There ain't no servant girls now, Gaffer. All that's been done away
with while you was inside."

And there's one of the most horrible people I've seen in any detective
story, because she has such an effective smiling face.

"You know the sort of district this is. A lot of very good houses
going down, and a very good lot of people going down too. Old ladies
needing money more than jewellery and not knowing how to go about
selling it. Bits of nice lace and a piece of old furniture on their
hands, perhaps. Well, I'm not proud. Living near the Canon all these
years has taught me how to be humble, I hope, and, like him, I like
to do a bit of good where I can. So I trot round helping. There's
many an old woman under a good eiderdown at this moment much more
comfortable than if she only had her mother's cameo in a chest of
drawers instead. I go everywhere and I know everyone. Sometimes I
buy and sometimes I sell. And sometimes I have things given me for
charity, and I turn them into money and send the little cheque to
one of the societies."

This is a fairly slow-moving book by modern standards, but a solid one
that repays a bit of a wallow rather than a fast-paced read.